In 2006, the Carabinieri, Italy’s national military police, raised the alarm about illegal digging in a forest of oaks and chestnuts near Vetralla, in the province of Viterbo, north of Rome. The Soprintendenza, the state body in charge of archaeology in the region, sent a team to the site for an emergency excavation in May […]

While Brutus and his allies were stabbing Julius Caesar to death, a good chunk of the Roman working class was having a picnic. They drank wine, pitched makeshift tents out of branches and cloth, and toasted to as many years of life as cups they could down. It was the feast of Anna Perenna, the […]

One of the greatest affronts suffered by the Roman legions took place in 321 BC, after the Battle of the Caudine Forks. Not only because of the forced surrender, without even fighting, but also due to the humiliation that officers and soldiers endured afterwards, being forced to pass, dressed only in their tunics, under a […]